If You Go, Then So Will I
by Team Damon
Summary: "No matter how dark the night, she would always be here, by his side. In a world where little was guaranteed besides change, sometimes good and sometimes terrible, this would never change. She was with him until the end." Oneshot


**A/N: this is a story based on the seventh book's dipiction of the aftermath of Nagini's attack on Harry and Hermione in Godric's Hollow. We don't really get a good idea of what happened when they escaped, other than Harry being out of his mind for hours, moaning and shouting, not exactly conscious or unconscious, as he watches Voldemort's memory of killing his parents, among other things. I've been wanting to write this for weeks. The very brief dialgoue is taken directly from the book. Lyrics are from "Anthem of the Angels" by Breaking Benjamin, and I normally wouldn't suggest listening to a song while reading a story, but I greatly recommend it this time. It's like the song was made for Harry and Hermione in book seven, lol. Let me know what you think!**

_Days go on forever _

_But I have not left your side_

_We can chase the dark together_

_If you go, then so will I_

Tears spilled freely down Hermione's face as she wiped Harry's face with a cloth, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she watched him writhe in agony. They'd just escaped Godric's Hollow an hour ago, but Harry hadn't stopped moaning and screaming for one even a single moment since then. Some of his words made sense, others were unintelligible, but each word was a knife to her heart, a pain that she couldn't touch, instead being forced to watch helplessly.

Harry had screamed in rage, a deeply unsettling, unrecognizable scream, as soon as she had safely put him in his bed in their tent. She'd backed away, frightened, but then his scream had turned to heart-wrenching crying, and she'd returned to his side. She tried to wake him, but he was in a seemingly impenetrable trance, and nothing she could do could stop the cries as they turned into shouts.

It was while she was trying to wrench away the Horcrux from his chest, thinking it was possibly the culprit of Harry's fit, that she realized from the words he was shouting what he must be seeing. With horror, she realized that he was inside of Voldemort's mind, no doubt worsened by the piece of the monster's soul that was clamped down across his heart, and that he was watching his parents' murder through the eyes of their killer.

She ran her fingers through Harry's sweat-dampened hair, knowing he was well beyond her comfort where he was, her other hand covering her mouth as he mumbled, screamed, and cried, sometimes in a cold, high, enraged voice that wasn't his, and sometimes in a voice that sounded as if it had never known anything but a thousand lifetimes of pain. He cried a baby's cry a few times, undoubtedly his own from his infancy, and in some ways, it was worse than hearing Voldemort's voice coming from Harry's lips. His eyes opened and closed often, and when they were open, they were cloudy and unfocused, usually fixed on the ceiling and as foreign as the sounds coming from his mouth. Her skin crawled as she listened and watched, and she didn't know what else to do but just try to stay focused and get the locket off of him before he lost his mind.

When the locket finally came off after she very carefully cast a Severing Charm, she examined the mark that it left over his heart, oval shaped and painfully red, and she placed her hand over it. His heart raced dangerously rapidly under her palm, and she began to cry.

Harry was all she had left. She was all Harry had left. Since Ron had gone, things had gotten tense between them and they were careful not to say his name, or Ginny's, not wanting to increase the other's pain. But Harry's company, even when he was silent, was enough to ease her anxiety and the hurt of Ron's abrupt and angry departure, at least enough so that she could make it through the day.

She wouldn't have chosen to be anywhere else but with Harry. She knew that she was where she was supposed to be, but the uncertainty and the fear that followed them was enough to nearly break her. They were always one short step away from death and defeat, one misstep away from disaster, and it was so much worse than she could have imagined. They were alone - utterly alone - and they were not even close to their goal of destroying the Horcrux they had, let alone the other three that were still out there.

So now, as he jerked and shouted uncontrollably, she continued to wipe his forehead and speak to him in futility, telling him that it was alright, that they were safe, and that he would be okay. Her tears fell on his face and she allowed herself to lose control of her emotions when he began crying childishly and heartbreakingly for his mum as he undoubtedly watched her be killed before his eyes, and though she couldn't see the vision herself, it all became too much, and her heart broke for her best friend.

It was the fact of being helpless, of not knowing what was happening to him, having never seen something like this happen to Harry, that drove her nearly to insanity herself. She wondered if he was being possessed by Voldemort again, or if he was so deeply buried inside of his mind that this was happening. Time became nothing, and the night became as terrifying as their day in Godric's Hollow, where giant snakes sook their deaths, and bone chilling terror had erupted when Harry had yelled to her, "_He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!"_

She thought it had been over when they'd Apparated here, to the Forest of Dean, but it appeared to only be the beginning of a night so terrible for Harry that she prayed by some miracle he wouldn't remember any of this in the morning.

A few feet away lay Harry's broken wand, nearly as broken as the boy himself as hours passed without reprieve. Hermione continued to try in vain to wake and comfort him, desperately wishing the screaming and crying would stop, but it did not. Where she had been able to tell what he was seeing before, when he'd been lost in Voldemort's memory of his parents' murders, she could not decipher his cries anymore. She had no idea what he was seeing now, or if he was seeing anything at all. Maybe he was just trying to find his way back but failing, maybe Voldemort was torturing him in a way that only he could, and maybe this wouldn't end until Harry was left insane.

Her panic ebbed and flowed as the time passed, and her heart ached and grew at the same time, filling with the love she had for her best friend. She couldn't say that she took him for granted, because it was hard to take someone for granted who narrowly escaped death each year since she'd met him, but she vowed to never ever let a day go by after today where she wouldn't thank God for the breath in Harry's lungs and his place in her life. Dumbledore was dead, her parents were gone, unaware that they even had a daughter, and Ron was gone off to who knew where, and just where would she be without Harry? Where would _anyone_ in the wizarding world be without Harry?

Her hand stayed over his heart for an unknown but lengthy period of time, as if to guard it from the war going on inside of his head and outside of the safety of the tent, since the person it belonged to wasn't there to protect it herself.

Her heart felt vulnerable and empty without Ron just as she knew his did without Ginny. She and Harry were as close as two friends could be, but they couldn't give each other what they needed most, and sometimes she wished they could. But he loved Ginny and she loved Ron, and these facts wouldn't change, no matter the desperate thoughts that popped into her head when she was stuck for days inside a tent with nobody but Harry. She wouldn't have thought them if she wasn't heartbroken and scared out of her mind, not to mention unbearably lonely when he retreated inside his mind and they spent nights in silence. She knew where her heart belonged, and who had it. But it didn't mean she wasn't human, and it didn't make her days any easier.

She glanced at her wristwatch and realized it was nearly morning, and that Harry had been going on like this for hours now. She would have gladly traded places to give him a respite, like they did every day when they took turns wearing the Horcrux, but she could not, and her panic was starting to grow again. He needed to wake soon, he _needed_ to, or she would lose her already precarious hold on herself.

His hair was soaked and his damp shirt clung to his skin, but the tears stopped falling from his eyes eventually. His hands had been balled into fists the entire time, sometimes waving about aimlessly, sometimes clenched against his bed. He moved from side to side, curling and uncurling his knees to his chest as if in immense pain, and through it all, she kept her hand over his heart and used her other hand to wipe his face and sometimes to run her shaky fingers through his hair, never giving up hope that one of her touches would reach him.

Dawn was only moments away from breaking when his eyes opened once more, but this this time, the green orbs were not deadened or glazed. Her heart leaped and hope burst forth anew, though she quickly removed her hand from its place on his chest under his shirt as he moaned. "No..."

"Harry, it's all right, you're all right!" she said, relief washing over her as his eyes opened again, even clearer now, and his body stilled just a little from its wild movements.

Harry began to moan about dropping something, something that must have been important, and she spoke again. "Harry, it's okay, wake up, wake up!"

And he did. Finally, whatever he'd been fighting and suffering terribly under since the moment they Apparated out of Godric's Hollow faded, and Harry returned to his own mind, his own body, and to the present. She allowed herself to breathe fully for the first time that night, and time began to tick once more.

He would be angry about his broken wand. He would be angry about a lot of things to come, she knew that. But she knew he wouldn't push her away for long, and not just because they only had each other. She'd go with him to the ends of the earth, and that may well be where they ended up when all of this finally came to an end.

She wouldn't leave. She would never have dreamed of it, not even when her first love abandoned them weeks ago. And she would never tell him the details of what she'd seen and heard that night if he didn't ask, and she wouldn't breathe a word of it to anyone else either.

No matter how dark the night, she would always be here, by his side. In a world where little was guaranteed besides change, sometimes good and sometimes terrible, this would never change. She was with him until the end.


End file.
